Illustration Ninety-Six: Resurrection Heard Once More

"I just can’t stand it any longer... Damn, if that old man notices I’ve drifted off, he’ll make me leave. Don’t you let them get the better of you."

The Heavenly Emperor vanished at once, gone before his words had even finished echoing behind him.

"Kill for our master’s vengeance!"

"Charge!"

The attendants of the great painter produced their attack scrolls and, in a frenzy, hurled them at Sang Sang.

"Do I really look that easy to bully?" Sang Sang frowned. With a squeeze of the hand covering the dragon-horse’s eyes, the newly born creature burst apart with a bang, dissolving into several clusters of energy that crashed into the onrushing attackers.

Smack, smack, smack, smack...

After a few muffled pops like watermelons smashing open, every attendant became a headless corpse. Their bodies still staggered forward on inertia for a few steps before collapsing.

A red glow lit up the soul-gathering array at the bottom of the pool.

Sang Sang looked down and nodded to herself. "Soul gathering, soul gathering... that’s right. What happened just now was only a transfer. Only now is it truly gathering souls. So that’s what it’s for—collecting the spirits of the dead."

The ground was strewn with corpses, and blood ran everywhere.

Sang Sang’s attack was even more visually shocking than the Heavenly Emperor turning people into fleshy balls. The area that had been cleared was only the pool itself; people still crowded the surroundings, with most of the traffic spilling into the shops along the street. There were more than enough onlookers in the central square, and shrieks and retching rose one after another from nearby.

A roc soared into the sky.

Sang Sang lifted her hand, and an invisible thread lashed around one of its legs before yanking hard.

With a piercing cry, the roc crashed to the ground, its feathers smeared with blood.

In a friendly tone, Sang Sang asked, "Quiet down. Wouldn’t it be better if I sent you into reincarnation?"

The roc fell silent, then shook its head frantically, scraping words into the ground with its claws: "Live" and "Spare my life."

Even as a bird, it wanted to live on with courage.

Sang Sang tilted her head, lost in thought, then tapped the ground and leapt onto its head. "Let me take a look at your condition. If you’re honest, I can spare your life."

The roc did not dare move.

After collecting its information, Sang Sang kept her word and let it go. She also tidied up the ruined central square while she was at it.

All the corpses dissolved into spiritual energy, and the bloodstains evaporated as well. The spotless ground made one wonder whether the scene just witnessed had been nothing more than an illusion.

"Within the entire Danxia World, only souls truly exist. Everything else is merely created spiritual energy taking form through the laws. No wonder the teacher said that when I hit a bottleneck, I should try studying flowers and trees. Another small piece of the creation puzzle has fallen into place."

The central square was where common folk gathered. But when Sang Sang and the Heavenly Emperor made their move, the spiritual energy throughout Danstone Town surged like wind and clouds. Anyone with even a slightly higher affinity for spiritual energy could sense it, and the painters who had just taken part in the grand distribution of the Law Heavenly Pill were instantly stirred to life.

Such a violent fluctuation of spiritual energy. Could another Law Heavenly Pill have appeared?

The first wave of painters arrived just in time to see the blood-soaked corpses on the ground dissolve into spiritual energy and disperse into the air with a wave of Sang Sang’s hand. The once-mighty swan army shrank at once into a flock of quails.

There was only one exception.

"Sang Hongye, why are you here?"

The speaker was the dean of Clear River Painting Academy, the very great painter who had wanted to take Sang Sang in as his closed-door disciple.

"Dean." Sang Sang was respectful toward her teachers. She straightened her sleeves and bowed slightly. "I’m here with someone to have a child formed."

The Clear River dean sidestepped out of the way. Those who noticed this looked at Sang Sang with even stranger expressions. What kind of status did she have that even the Clear River dean did not dare accept her salute? What sort of family could have raised a girl of twelve or thirteen to be this formidable?

"The academy’s nursery pool is better than this one. Why didn’t you take them there?"

The Clear River dean was kind and amiable, entirely unlike his reputation as the Black-Faced God of Slaughter.

"It’s closer here," Sang Sang answered solemnly. Then she added, "Dean, you look radiant today. You must have gained much from this trip."

"Hm. Not bad," the Clear River dean said with a slight nod, satisfaction impossible to hide on his face. He introduced her to the others. "This is Sang Hongye, our academy’s secret weapon for this year’s painting duel tournament. Such a pity you all discovered her ahead of time."

Sang Sang received a flood of compliments and gifts of greeting, but not everyone was willing to show the Clear River dean face.

Someone said in a sly, mocking tone, "Clear River, the people lying here were wearing the uniforms of our Wishing City. Care to explain?"

The Clear River dean replied calmly, "Just a few attendants. Dead is dead. Our Hongye has a fiery temper, but she is very reasonable. The other side must have insulted her first, or she would never have struck."

Another voice said, "It wasn’t just the attendants. Master Xuyun is missing too."

"Reanimation Master Xuyun? Is that true?"

Everyone turned in surprise toward the speaker: a painter from the Brush Clan, who shrank under their gazes and looked even less composed than a child.

The Clear River dean said coldly, "What exactly happened? Start from the beginning, and don’t let me discover a single exaggeration or falsehood."

The people from Wishing City also said, "Go on. Don’t be afraid. In this world, reason still counts for something."

The Brush Clan painter did not dare look at Sang Sang or the Clear River dean. He gave a brief account: "Our Thirteenth Young Lady was injured and carried back while hunting monsters in Ten Thousand Demons Forest. It was her bodyguard martial master who did it. But when she arrived in Danstone Town, she hid in the Xing family’s brush house. Since the rules prevented us from going directly to their door to ask for her, we waited until today when she came out. We wanted to invite her back to the Brush Clan to ask what happened. Who knew the people we sent all rolled back in. Master Xuyun said the method was remarkable, that she must have awakened memories from a previous life, and that he should meet her. Then he never returned."

The people from Wishing City looked at Sang Sang. "Where is Master Xu?"

Sang Sang answered coolly, "Dead."

Seeing that Sang Sang showed no regret or guilt at all, the other man flew into a rage. "You—"

The Clear River dean hurriedly stopped him. "Wait. Hongye, you didn’t severely damage their souls, did you?"

Sang Sang shook her head. "No."

The Clear River dean waved a hand. "Then that settles it. A so-called reanimation master cannot even beat a student of barely ten years old, and he still has the nerve to come cause trouble? Since you learned of this in time, hurry back and summon the soul for revival. Once seven days pass, even if the soul is called back, the memory will be gone and they’ll have to start over from the beginning. Then your Wishing City really will lose one great painter."

Summon the soul? Revive the dead?

Sang Sang’s eyes flickered. She secretly hoped the other party would come looking for trouble again after being revived, so that she could use the mirror of temporal reversal to watch the memories from their return.

The Clear River dean took the matter entirely into his own hands and declared that before the painting duel tournament began, he would pursue to the end anyone who made trouble for Sang Hongye. Since the Brush Clan had not even lost anyone, they were forbidden from causing her any trouble.

Sang Sang declined the dean’s invitation and returned to the Xing family to continue learning brush-making from Old Man Xing. Unexpectedly, on the very next day, the Clear River dean arrived at the door in the identity of a student’s parent and then simply settled down in the Xing residence.

"The painting duel tournament starts in half a month. I’ll be waiting here. When the time comes, no matter how far along your brush-making is, you have to come with me."

The Clear River dean felt a strong sense of crisis. After learning the details of the central square incident from those who knew, he began to weigh Sang Sang’s true strength. Then he realized that Sang Sang had never once agreed she would definitely take part in the painting duel tournament, so he adopted a strategy of close surveillance. In any case, he had just taken a Law Heavenly Pill and it was inconvenient for him to return to the academy.

He had not expected that after moving in, he would be startled every day by the speed of her progress, until at last he could only sum it up with one sentence: "As expected, the royal bloodline is exactly as monstrous as the legends say."

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